Neocon Republicans And The "Who Lost Iraq?" Fast Shuffle

Several perceptive folks have noticed, particularly in the aftermath of John Ellis "J.E.B." Bush's week-long floundering on brother Dumbya's Iraq catastrophe, that Republicans are cowardly trying to turn the issue of ISIL's recent gains (after a series of setbacks) in Iraq into an indictment of President Obama (and, of course, Hillary Clinton) to divert attention from the Republican originator of the mess (and his "smarter" brother):

After more than a decade bearing the political burden of Iraq, Republicans are making a dogged effort to shed it by arguing that the Islamic State’s gruesome ascent is a symptom of Obama’s foreign policy, rather than a byproduct of the 2003 invasion they once championed.

Chaos in the city of Ramadi, which this week fell under the control of Islamic State militants, has only intensified the Republican outcry.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog noticed the corporate "mainstream media" is already engaged in tying the recent loss of Ramadi to ISIL into a narrative about the pain veterans of the Iraq War feel over seeing the city fall.  Mind you, not that the whole bloody mess originated in the first place because of the lies of Likudnik chickenhawk neocons.  More evidence, if any were needed, that the "mainstream media" is the perfect foil for Republican revisionists because it has the perspective of Mr. Magoo and the attention span of a mayfly.

Charles P. Pierce noted Steve's catch and had this to say:

...The only way for the people who shook their moneymakers for the war in 2002 to justify their continued place in our politics is to use ISIL to replace the aluminum tubes and hope that enough people don't notice what a grotesque fast shuffle this is. That will clear the way for the candidates on the Republican side -- Rubio, Graham, Jeb (!), and, most recently, Chris Christie -- who want to revive the old neocon hoo-rah while distancing themselves from its savage consequences. It looks very much like "Who lost Iraq?" may replace the disastrous decisions of the Avignon Presidency in this campaign, and that a good chunk of the Republican field will be perfectly happy to allow that to happen. For all the talk of the president's fecklessness from the chickenhawk choir, what those candidates are about right now is the worst kind of cowardice.

That Republicans are trying to turn recent events in the Middle East into a "Who lost Iraq?" narrative is beyond obscene, especially, as Pierce notes, with the same Republican neocons (Sen. "Huckleberry Butchmeup" Graham, Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio and "J.E.B." Bush adviser Paul Wolfowitz) ready and willing to repeat the same disastrous mistakes all over again, with a new generation of someone elses children. That whirring sound must be George Santayana spinning in his grave.

UPDATE:  Ruben Bolling sums it up also (click on image to enlarge):

(Attribution: Ruben Bolling)

Unhappy 10th Anniversary, Iraq War - and the Nixon Tie-In

This is the 10th anniversary of the start of the glorious neo-con Iraq war of choice, a war that cost this nation over 4,000 lives,  over 32,000 wounded,  and over $800 billion, costs we will continue to pay for years to come.  And then there are the staggering costs of the war to the Iraqi people.  The war's architects -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. --  and the hallelujah chorus on the right and in the media have never been called to account in the manner they should have =cough = prison= cough= for the lives and treasure lost in this manufactured war;  after all, there were so many with blood on their hands and we are a nation looking forward, right?

So, what does Richard Nixon have to do with this (after all, he died years before, in 1994).  Well, what is now being reported of Nixon's role at a critical stage of the Vietnam War reminds us that these two Rethuglican presidents -- "patriots" Bush and Nixon -- would not let the truth, morality or the best interests of the United States interfere with their ambition:

"By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands". [snip]


It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.  He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

 

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal."

Which, of course, the South Vietnamese did.  So, as many as 22,000 Americans died in Vietnam following 1968 (including our cousin) because Nixon -- God damn him -- didn't want the peace talks to end the fighting before the election, because that might have led to Hubert Humphrey being elected.  And the war dragged on for another 5 years.

In summary, we have two "patriotic" Rethuglican presidents (are there any other kind?) who needlessly spilled the blood and treasure of the United States, and the people of Vietnam and Iraq, for ...what?

(h/t Mr. Pierce)

The Legacy Continues To Unravel

Glenn Kessler reports in the WaPo (no link) that FBI interviews learned that, before he was hanged, Saddam Hussein said that he wanted the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction as a deterrence to arch-enemy Iran. Ironically, the main beneficiary of Preznit Chimpy's invasion of Iraq happened to be Iran, allowing it to become an unchallenged force in the region, and alarming the Saudis and Jordanians, among other Arab countries.

Hussein also denounced Osama bin Laden as a "zealot" and said his government had no connections with al Qaeda. That rings true, since Hussein's Baathist Party has long been seen by radical theocratic Muslims -- such as al Qaeda -- as a corrupt secular obstacle to establishing an Islamic caliphate.

Meanwhile, Tuesday marked the withdrawal of U.S. troops from urban areas in Iraq. The Iraqi government, now friendly to Iran, designated the day as "National Sovereignty Day" as thousands celebrated the pull out in the streets of Baghdad and other cities. It was what Preznit Chimpy and The Dick had promised when we invaded Iraq, but not as we withdrew.

An Anniversary Noted

It's been six years since the U.S. launched the war on Iraq, despite the fact that al Qaeda was still undefeated in the Afghan/Pakistan frontier. Rethugs are running around claiming "victory" even though the forces that attacked us have rebuilt, and the regime in Iran has more power in the region than 6 years ago. Not even Gens. Petraeus and Odierno are doing the victory dance. The Iraqi government wants us to leave on a specific timetable, and some experts (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Ricks) believe that Iraq will end up ruled by a Shiite strongman, the mirror image of Sunni Baathist Saddam Hussein, but with close ties to fundmentalist Iran.

Heckuva job.

An Ominous Warning from al Sadr

CNN is reporting that Iraqi Shiite cleric Muktada al-Sadr is threatening "open war" if the Iraqi government, backed by U.S. forces, don't call off attacks on his Mahdi army. al-Sadr complied with the government's order to vacate his headquarters in Basra, but the government wants the Shiite militia to vacate all buildings its control, and is using force to speed that up.

Not long after Dumbya's invasion of Iraq, the U.S. initially courted al-Sadr, who was an enemy of Saddam Hussein's regime, but when it became clear that al-Sadr wanted U.S. forces out of Iraq, he was seen at cross purposes with Dumbya's grand vision. Now we're seeing the result of that flawed "vision" about to erupt in another round of their civil war.

Turkey and Giblets

The recent Turkish invasion of the Kurdish area of Iraq points up the disaster Bushit policies have wrought in the Middle East. Above all, the Middle East - - and Iraq in particular - - is a witches' brew of hostile ethnic and religious disparity: Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd, Baathist and Islamist, and multiple variations of the above and more. Dumbya literally threw gasoline on these hot coals that have existed for centuries when he manufactured a cause for war and ordered the invasion of Iraq. The Bushits thought that they could conquer Iraq on the cheap, while Afghanistan - - and now nuclear Pakistan - - continues to disintegrate under al Qaeda and Taliban resurgence (remember them? The ones who actually attacked us?) The Kurds, Iraqis, and we are reaping the whirlwind of Dumbya's arrogance and incompetence, and will do so for years to come regardless of the 2008 election outcome.

Chalabi Your Butt-Boy?

Ahmed Chalabi, the corrupt Iraqi Dead-Eye Dick and the neo-con dimbulbs wanted to parachute into Iraq to set up a provisional government after "Mission Accomplished," looks like he's being maneuvered (or is maneuvering us) into being Prime Minister Maliki's replacement. Recently seen at Gen. Petreaus' side meeting with tribal leaders, the reptilian Chalabi seems to be on the verge of a comeback, thanks no doubt to the influence of Dead-Eye and his band of merry incompetents. Chalabi, who is all-too-willing to serve as the assministration's butt-boy if it propels him into power, has a history of corruption and double-dealing that turned even the CIA against him. Chalabi=Saddam Lite? Isn't democracy grand, people of Iraq?!

PanDumbya's Box

As Pandora's box contained a host of calamities, so it appears does PanDumbya's box. When he decided to let al Qaeda off the hook and pursue his family's old nemesis Saddam Hussein, he unleashed a series of calamitous events in the Middle East, with many events yet to reach their ugly peak. The loss of allied support that we had gathered after 9/11 to go after al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts, the lies and misinformation developed to justify attacking Iraq, the miserably failed occupation and subsequent uprising: one lie and bungle after another. And now a strengthened al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Turkey poised to invade the Kurdish region of Iraq, and this nutty Assministration and its neocon allies making ominous war noises toward Iran. This should settle the world's Muslims down all right.

Hail the conquering moron!